Building soil carbon in semi-arid drylands for landscape resilience

Building carbon in dryland soils is a key to farmland resilience David Heislers is Kilter Rural's Sustainability Manager. In this peer reviewed article, David outlines the finding of a 3 year trial to demonstrate that the return of permanent dryland groundcover to the landscape should result in more perennial vegetation, less cultivation, and therefore a gradual increase in and retention of soil organic carbon compared to the previous irrigated land use.

This project demonstrated that a long term, multi-decadal approach is likely required to build statistically measurable soil carbon stocks in the dry (but climatically variable) inlands of Australia. A decade or more may be necessary to resolve a statistically significant outcome where there is low sequestration rates associated with environments of limited vegetation growth rates.